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TOPIC: propaganda

FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

A Russian Soldier Confessed To Killing A Ukrainian Civilian — So Moscow Convicted Him Of Spreading Fake News

After Russian soldiers committed multiple war crimes last year during the attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region, some confessed to their crimes. But now they are being tried in Russia for spreading misinformation about the military.

Following multiple reports of war crimes in the early weeks of the war in Ukraine, Russian soldier Daniil Frolkin was interviewed last August by Vazhnye Istorii. In the conversation with the reporter for the independent Russian media, Frolkin confessed to the murder of an unarmed civilian who Ukrainian authorities believe was a 47-year-old named Ruslan Yaremchuk.

Now this public act of truth-telling has led to Frolkin standing trial in Russia and being convicted for spreading misinformation about the Russian military.

He was found guilty and sentenced to probation, though the Russian prosecutor had asked for six years of prison. After the court proceeding Wednesday, Frolkin quickly left and refused to talk to journalists.

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China-Russia Summit, Pope Calls For Ceasefire, Battle Of Oranges

👋 Allo!*

Welcome to Wednesday, where Vladimir Putin meets with China’s top diplomat in Moscow, Japan and China have their first formal security talks in four years and Starbucks launches a new drinks flavor for Italian palates. Meanwhile, we look at how Russia’s war propaganda machine has backfired and actually left Moscow itself as the prime victim of its own lies.

[*Seychellois Creole]

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Pop And Propaganda — How Taiwan's Teens Are Lured By Chinese Social Media

As more young people in Taiwan use Chinese social media, drawn to the fun and glitzy elements of life on mainland China, they need to learn to distinguish real life from propaganda.

TAIPEI — Su is a high school student from Northern Taiwan, who spends hours every day watching short videos from Douyin, the Chinese-exclusive version of TikTok.

A recent trend on the platform is short sketches based on similar scripts, and he said he is addicted to watching these videos. "I had to set up a mainland China Apple ID to download Douyin, the videos there are funnier and trendier (than TikTok)."

Su is hardly the only Douyin fan in Taiwan. According to the DIGITAL Taiwan survey released by digital platform analytics firm We are social and KEPIOS in early 2022, there are approximately 4.16 million active Douyin users in Taiwan, with an average growth rate of 3.5% per quarter. Of these, the proportion of young users is 38%.

Taiwan's READr 2021 survey of social media usage among high school students found that while Facebook and Instagram are still the most popular social media platforms, Chinese apps such as Douyin are quickly catching up.

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A Year Of Putin Lies: How Russian War Propaganda Has Backfired From Day One

From the first fake news reports that Zelensky had fled to Putin’s latest speech Tuesday that blamed the war on the West, Russia’s attempts to manipulate opinion have wound up leaving Moscow itself as the prime victim of its own lies.

-Analysis-

One year of war can also be counted in 365 days of lies, disinformation and fake news.

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With its invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s Russia turned up the volume and rhythm on a propaganda machine that has been deployed the past decade across a range of channels to manipulate public opinion, at home and abroad.

It has continued to the present, with Putin delivering a major speech Tuesday in which he repeated many of the falsehoods that have justified a war that has not gone as planned — all the while vowing to continue to fight.

Yet, this would-be secret weapon of disinformation has repeatedly backfired, ultimately contributing in a crucial way to the Kremlin’s overall failures in the war. And as we now mark the one-year anniversary of the invasion, the story of the broken propaganda machine is coming full circle.

Let’s go back to the beginning, to the first Big Lie that Moscow told after the Feb. 24 invasion was launched. By the following morning, multiple Russian Internet publications close to the Kremlin were reporting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had disappeared, most likely escaped to London, where he allegedly held real estate property. According to the reports, much of the top echelon of Ukrainian leadership had likewise fled Kyiv, leaving the poor, abandoned Ukrainians to scatter into basements to hide from the advancing and inevitable takeover of the invincible Russian army.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Proekt

"Kremlin Insiders Say..." How Even Independent Media Spread Russian Misinformation

Moscow has a tight grip on Russia's media. But instead of trying to fully control the few remaining independent media outlets, it learned how to manipulate them for its own purposes.

Since its invasion of Ukraine, even as it struggles on the battlefield, Russia has made significant progress on how to win on the information frontline inside the country.

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Exiled Russian-language media outlet Proekt reports that Russians and people around the world have lost their last hope at actually understanding the Kremlin's actions.

That's because Russian leaders have learned how to play the few remaining independent Russian media outlets with Kremlin-spun “insights”. These are then used by the foreign media and key decision-makers at home and abroad.

One of these outlets is Meduza, an influential Russian- and English-language news website based in Riga, Latvia.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Anna Akage

Do It For The Money! What's Behind A Strange New Series Of Russian Propaganda Videos

A video series appeared then vanished this week from Russia’s only authorized social media platform. Its purpose seemed to be to recruit men (of all ages) to enlist in the war, as a way to make money. But who exactly is behind the campaign? What was the ultimate objective?

There was an episode this week on the Russian internet that was as bizarre as it was telling.

A series of five videos of dubious quality appeared Monday on Vkontakte, Russia’s most popular and currently only legally accessible social network. Shared on the I Mobilized public forum, the videos used soap opera-like scenarios to urge Russian men to enlist in the army. But rather than the usual calls to patriotism or neo-Nazi accusations against Ukraine, the odd recruitment videos were all focused on a singular motivation to sign up for the war: money.

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Yet after just three days, the videos disappeared from the social network, and all the content and comments were deleted. The day before they were scrubbed from the web, the Russian publication Vazhnyye Istorii wrote about the videos, and managed to get in touch with a few of the actors who took part.

Still, it remains unclear who was behind the project, who paid for it, and what the ultimate objective may have been.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Vazhnyye Istorii/Important Stories

Important Things: A Rare Unfiltered Look Inside Russian Schools

In Russian schools, lessons on "important things" are a compulsory hour pushing state propaganda. But not everyone is buying it. Independent Russian media outlet Vazhnyye Istorii/Important Stories spoke to teachers, parents and students about how they see patriotism and Putin's mobilization.

MOSCOW — On March 1, schools found themselves on the ideological front line of the Russian-Ukrainian war. At the end of May, teachers were told they would have to lead classes with students called "Lessons about important things." The topic was "patriotism and civic education."

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At the beginning of November, we learned about the revival of an elementary military training course for senior classes. In the teaching materials sent to the teachers, it was stated that a "special peacekeeping operation was going on, the purpose of which was to restrain the nationalists who oppress the Russian-speaking population."

Independent Russian media outlet Vazhnyye Istorii/Important Stories asked several teachers, students and parents about their experiences with the school's attempt to instill patriotism and Russia's partial mobilization of citizens.

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Geopolitics
Firoozeh Nordstrom

Is Elon Watching? How Chaos At Twitter Could Impact Iranian Protesters

Two anonymous Iranian Twitter users spoke about their hopes that Iran's protests could hasten the end of the unpopular regime, and what Elon Musk's takeover of the the platform could mean for them.

The world has been paying special attention to the scope and endurance of anti-state protests in Iran that erupted in September after the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. A key to maintaining momentum and attention has been social media, with users and activists eager to stay in contact and communicate around what many in Iran hope will be the movement to end the 40-year Islamist reign.

Social media's role in resisting oppressive regimes dates back to the protests of the Arab Spring, and more than 10 years later, Twitter in particular (with the option to have an anonymous account) is being used again in Iran.

However, since Elon Musk's takeover of the platform, serious concerns have been raised about whether the platform will survive. Ciaran O’Connor, senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said in an interview that "If Twitter was to ‘go in the morning’, let's say, all of this—all of the firsthand evidence of atrocities or potential war crimes, and all of this potential evidence—would simply disappear."

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In The News
Lisa Berdet, Chloé Touchard, Lila Paulou and Bertrand Hauger

All Eyes On Southern Ukraine, Baghdad Clashes, Pumpkin Ride

👋 Da'anzho!*


Welcome to Tuesday, where Ukraine launches a counteroffensive to retake Kherson in the south of the country, deadly clashes rock Iraq after cleric al-Sadr resigns, and the world record for pumpkin paddling (you read that right) gets broken. We also turn to Ukraine’s news platform Livy Bereg to see how Russian propaganda plays out across European countries.



[*Eastern Apache]

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Irina Subota

Winter Is Coming: Breaking Down Russian Propaganda Across Europe

Hit by EU sanctions, Russia is working hard to spread its own propaganda through neighboring countries. A new study breaks down exactly what that disinformation campaign is saying — and whether it's working.

-Analysis-

KYIV — One of the main narratives of Russian propaganda in recent years can be summed up as: "Russia is a global power and the West must respect it." Yet since the beginning of the invasion, the European Union has imposed a series of sanctions against Russia.

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In light of this clash, Moscow's propaganda in the West has taken four different and distinct lines: "The future of the EU will be cold and hungry...," "the EU shot itself in the foot...," "the U.S. economy is also suffering, and is now looking for ways to resume business with Russia...," and "sanctions do not harm Russia, they only make it stronger."

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In The News
Anna Akage, Bertrand Hauger and Emma Albright

Zelensky Reveals Why He Didn’t Warn Ukrainians About Russian Invasion

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed in an interview with the Washington Post on Tuesday that although he knew about the likelihood of a Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government did not make the news public to avoid causing panic. “We knew about the war, but we could not warn the Ukrainians about it, otherwise, we would have lost immediately.”

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CIA Director William Burns had visited Zelensky in mid-January to warn of a planned Russian attack. But Zelensky stated that informing the Ukrainian public would have made a Russian victory more likely:

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LGBTQ Plus
Laura Valentina Cortés Sierra, Lisa Berdet, Lila Paulou, McKenna Johnson, Joel Silvestri and Emma Albright

LGBTQ+ International: Iraq Homosexuality Ban, Bhutan’s Beauty Queen — And The Week’s Other Top News

Italian police, Brazilian soccer, Japanese politics, and plenty of other stories from around the world

Welcome to Worldcrunch’s LGBTQ+ International. We bring you up-to-speed each week on the latest news on everything LGBTQ+ — a topic that you may follow closely at home, but can now see from different places and perspectives around the world. Discover the latest news from all corners of the planet. All in one smooth scroll!

Featuring, this week:

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